I called Brian Rothenberg last week to ask if it was OK for me to write that he is gay.

I called Brian Rothenberg last week to ask if it was OK for me to write that he is gay.

He already had been outed by a blogger -- one of his fellow liberals, no less -- who had not accorded him the decency of a call.

It is one thing, I cautioned, to have the most intimate details of your life publicly exposed in a little-read blog and quite another for them to appear in a newspaper that circulates to more than 300,000 homes on Sunday.

Just say the word, Brian, and I can find something else for my column.

"I don't mind it," he said. "I came to terms with being gay and talked to my family and my wife and dealt with it spiritually, and I don't hide it. My frustration is that I'm kind of introverted. I don't hang out in a lot of places, so if somebody didn't know, it's not because I was trying to keep it from anybody. What do you do, send out a press release?"

Rothenberg, 43, is a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat well known in Ohio's political realm. He started as an intern for then-Gov. Richard F. Celeste, worked as communications director for Ohio Senate Democrats in the 1990s, served as press secretary for then-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White, and was spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party.

Rothenberg was married for nine years. His former wife is remarried.

"I went through a long period where I had to figure things out and it hurt my ex-wife, but she's fine with it now. I've moved on with my life. I'm not ashamed of who I am. I'm no different than when I was married."

As executive director of Progress Ohio, a nonprofit organization that promotes liberal political and social causes, Rothenberg might be considered a quasi-public figure. But that's irrelevant in today's blogosphere, where there is no distinction between private and public. Everybody is fair game.

The rationalization for Rothenberg to be publicly outed was a video interview he did with state Rep. Jennifer Garrison of Marietta, a Democratic candidate for secretary of state. Perceived to be reluctant about supporting gay rights, Garrison announced her support for a bill that would make it illegal to deny housing and employment to anyone based on sexual orientation.

Rothenberg posted the video interview on Progress Ohio's Web site, naturally expecting that like-minded liberals would be happy to learn that Garrison "was moving in the right direction when it comes to gay rights."

After watching the video, Tim Russo, a Cleveland blogger, deemed that Garrison was being duplicitous, and thus he had a responsibility to out Rothenberg for using his "position of power to let the gay-baiting hater do damage control."

What ensued is all too common in the Wild West of cyberspace: A public discussion of Rothenberg's sexual orientation bounced around the Web. Although many of the commentators hid behind pseudonyms, Rothenberg is familiar with Russo and others in the liberal blogging community.

"When you meet these folks in person, they're very nice and even meek. But they feel like behind a keyboard they can say whatever they want, in whatever manner they want, and as mean-spirited as they want."

The reason Rothenberg participated in this column is because he is worried that unfettered Internet speech could have unwanted, even tragic, consequences.

"I believe passionately about the issues I'm working on and I also believe passionately that the technology we have gives people a great opportunity to be more participatory in democracy," Rothenberg said. "But I think we're on a collision course where something bad is going to happen if this kind of hate keeps up."

After The Dispatch posted stories about the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on its Web site last week, scores of readers anonymously added comments. They were, in the main, so vulgar, so hateful and so defamatory that the Web editors decided to take them down.